For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/HT201222
30 Best New iPadOS 15 Features You Should Try Right Now
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2021 saw the unveiling of the next-gen iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. iPadOS 15 finally brings with it improved multitasking controls, app widgets on the home screen, and several other helpful features users were looking forward to.
Let’s not beat around the bush and directly dive in to check out some cool new iPadOS 15 features that you should try on your iPad. Starting with the home screen of the iPad, the newest addition is a crisp app library that many users (including me) had been looking forward to for some time now. Built for the disorganized lot among us, you can access the app library either from the dock or via a swipe left on the home screen. The aim of widgets is to give a more personalized experience to iPad users by displaying relevant information that they can even customize according to their needs. iPadOS 15 introduces a new multitasking menu, which appears at the top of every app and is represented by three tiny dots. Tapping the second app divides the screen into 2 halves, and a bar in the middle allows adjustment for the real estate.
Apple is trying to rival Google Docs and Notion as the Notes app has received a suite of collaboration features. With the addition of these features, Notes has become a more powerful tool, and we can see an uptick in its usage when iPadOS 15 rolls out to all users later this year.
iPad users can now bring up a Quick Note in iPadOS 15 by swiping diagonally from the bottom right corner using an Apple Pencil or their finger. It has added a new Focus mode feature in iPadOS 15 to help reduce distractions while trying to work or play.
The Focus mode essentially stops and filters notifications and apps based on the user’s activity. You can choose from among Work, Personal, Do Not Disturb modes, or make your own custom Focus for Gaming, Reading, and more. Another handy Focus Mode feature is that you can choose to display only a select few Home Screen pages with limited apps and widgets. Focus Modes are shared across devices, so setting a routine on your iPad will automatically enable it on your iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch as well.
This feature has already been available on Android devices for years, thanks to Google Lens, but it is not as integrated into the operating system as Live Text is on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Live Text can further leverage the power of AI to identify a phone number and display options for calling from the photo or camera app itself.
For friends who love watching stuff together, Facetime is making the entire process much easier in iPadOS 15. Apple has partnered with popular streaming services, including Disney, HBOMax, Tiktok, and others, to let you binge-watch content with friends over FaceTime.
Furthermore, if you have Apple TV, you can always swipe and send the content to the big screen while you also continue to chat with your friends or family.
– A quick way to access reader mode in iPadOS 15 is to hold down the three dots button on an open tab. With the design overhaul and faster loading times, Safari has received a big boost this year. Apple’s demonstrated the improved Siri experience during the WWDC 2021 keynote, and the voice assistant handled multiple requests without any lag under a minute.
However, even before the update drops, Siri has a lot of cool tricks you can try out on your iOS and macOS device. One of the most impressive changes Apple showed off during the iPadOS 15 unveiling is the seamless Universal Control feature. However, if you are a Windows or Linux user looking for a similar feature, go follow our guide on how to use macOS Monterey Universal Control on your PC.
The face-to-face view splits the iPad’s screen down the middle, enabling two people to sit across each other and talk while the app translates away.
However, a more important feature is the option to select and translate text on iPad by merely holding down on it – be it any app or image across the system. According to Apple, the emails we receive may contain hidden pixels that allow the sender to learn information about us.
Mail Privacy Protection prevents email senders (including Apple) from tracking you. The Mail app will ensure this by downloading content in the background for privacy and then routing all the data through multiple proxy servers to hide the receiver’s IP address.
Apple’s cloud storage solution, iCloud has been bolstered with new protection tools that arrive as part of the iCloud+ subscription.
This new paid tier includes several security improvements that take Apple’s initiatives towards user privacy even further. The new features in iCloud+ include Private Relay, Hide my Mail, and expanded HomeKit Secure Video. Private Relay focuses on making the web browsing experience more secure in Safari on iPadOS 15.
You can learn what is Private Relay, how it works, and how to enable it on your iPhone and iPad from the linked in-depth explainer. HomeKit Secure Video Recording will let users connect more cameras in their Home app wherever applicable.
Budding coders looking for ways to learn how to code will be extremely delighted to find out the updates coming to the Swift Playgrounds app in iPadOS 15.
Swift Playgrounds is Apple’s education app that enables you to learn how to code with the help of interactive lessons. Swift Playgrounds in iPadOS 15 will also support auto-code completion, the ability to see how your app works in real-time, and more. This feature scans your entire iPad to find pieces like music, movies, shows, photos, and articles your friends have shared with you. Since this feature works system-wide, whatever media files, documents, and links you receive are always at your fingertips. iPadOS 15 users will be able to see greatly enhanced details for their favorite places in Apple Maps, including elevation and better labeling of districts.
Roads will also get new labels and colors, along with a better night-time mode with what Apple calls “Moonlit glow“.
Moreover, Spotlight will even work in tandem with Live Text and deliver results to specific searches like a public transit map or a screenshot of a recipe you may have taken a while back. The VoiceOver screen reader will now be able to use on-device intelligence to better identify objects within images, including other people, text, and much more. Taking on after iPhone, Apple has finally added the Low Power Mode in iPadOS 15.
If your iPad is low on battery, you can toggle on this feature, and background activity, including downloads and mail fetch, will be limited until you plug in your device for charging. Besides the new multitasking keyboard shortcuts, iPad users can now click and drag multiple items simultaneously, like they would on a Mac. So all those annoying moments when Instagram on the iPad refused to rotate and budge will be history once iPadOS 15 drops for all users in fall 2021. So if you are the type of person who wants to listens to a song on Apple Music while watching a tutorial in Safari, this hidden feature will be helpful to you. The smoother animations look nice and more controls like “Smart Rotate” and “Widget Suggestions” are available at the bottom of the editing stack. Talking about other meaningful changes, Apple has brought back the quick magnifying glass in iPadOS 15 to help view something in a large form.
This setting is present in the “Apple Pencil” section and allows you to turn off both the left (Screenshot) and right corner swipe gesture. Unfortunately, for some reason, Apple has not yet allowed the option to swap these two gestures but could very well arrive in a future beta update.
iPhone and iPad users can now download and install the iOS 15/ iPadOS 15 public beta with ease. So go ahead and try out the upcoming iPadOS 15 update before the stable release, and let us know any other cool features that you discover.
The 8 Best Features of iPadOS 15 You’ll Actually Use
From placing widgets anywhere on the Home Screen, to Quick Notes, Low Power Mode, and new multitasking functionalities, you’ll have some unique iPad specific features to check out. Simply long press on the Home Screen of iPad, then click the “+” button that appears in the upper left corner.
Now it’s much easier to put apps side-by-side on iPad, and you don’t need to memorize any complex gestures. Low Power Mode is a great feature on iPhone that has finally come to the iPad.
When enabled, some features of iPadOS will be disabled, and performance will be slightly reduced, but the end result is prolonged battery life. Go to Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode to enable this feature on iPad.
You can also add Low Power Mode to Control Center for quicker access. iPadOS 15 for iPad also shares many features with iOS 15 for iPhone, including the new Focus Mode, FaceTime for Windows/Android users, and much more, so don’t miss the best iOS 15 features roundup too, since many of those will apply to iPad as well, including things like Focus Mode.
iPadOS 15 now available: Features, compatible iPads, and more
The iPad software focuses on productivity features, bringing a new Home Screen design with integrated widgets and the App Library. With the release of iPadOS 14 in 2020, Apple introduced Home Screen widgets, expanded stock apps with unique iPad design elements like sidebars in Photos and Apple Music, new interfaces for Siri and incoming phone calls, and more. Redesigned Home Screen: Widgets, App Library, Focus, and Notification Center
In the bottom right corner, users can finally find the App Library, introduced with iOS 14.
With this function, users can select what kind of notifications they will receive while working or having some personal time. Functions people would expect to use while in quarantine are finally arriving in iMessage and FaceTime. iMessage now brings pinned messages, a new gallery grid for multiple images, and there are several new Memoji customizations. Still talking about iMessage and FaceTime, Apple introduced two new features called SharePlay and Shared with Me.
The cool part of this feature is that you can take your time to listen to a song, watch a TV show, or hear a podcast, and then click on it to reply to the message sent to you a few hours or days back. In the productivity section, Apple, unfortunately, didn’t bring all the features pro users wanted to take full advantage of their new M1 iPad Pro, even though Apple made it easier to rely on multitasking features.
They just need to slide the pencil through the bottom right corner to the center of the screen and start writing. A new open project format based on Swift packages can open and be edited in Swift Playgrounds for iPad as well as within Xcode on Mac, offering users even more versatility to develop apps across iPad and Mac.
It syncs across Mac and iPhone so users can continue their projects from anywhere or easily share them with friends and family. It brings a new feature called Auto Translate, which detects when someone is speaking so users can converse naturally without having to tap a microphone button.
Maps: Apple is enhancing details in cities for neighborhoods, commercial districts, elevation, and buildings, new road colors and labels, custom-designed landmarks, and a new nighttime mode with a moonlit glow. iCloud+: iCloud got new premium features, including the Hide My Email feature, expanded HomeKit Secure Video support, and a new internet privacy service, iCloud Private Relay, at no additional cost
With this version, the company finally brought SharePlay for all users as well as reverting Safari to its old design. It brings more features that were expected to launch alongside iPadOS 15 but, unfortunately, Universal Control is still nowhere to be seen. is a new subscription tier that gives you access to all songs, playlists, and stations in Apple Music using Siri App Privacy Report in Settings lets you see how often apps have accessed your location, photos, camera, microphone, contacts and more during the last seven days, as well as their network activity in Settings lets you see how often apps have accessed your location, photos, camera, microphone, contacts and more during the last seven days, as well as their network activity Communication safety setting gives parents the ability to enable warnings for children when they receive or send photos that contain nudity gives parents the ability to enable warnings for children when they receive or send photos that contain nudity Digital Legacy allows you to designate people as Legacy Contacts so they can access your iCloud account and personal information in the event of your death allows you to designate people as Legacy Contacts so they can access your iCloud account and personal information in the event of your death Apple TV app: Store tab lets you browse, buy, and rent movies and TV Shows all in one place One of the most notable changes here is a fix for a Safari vulnerability that may have been leaking your browsing history and Google ID data to the websites you visited. Different from other software updates, iPadOS 15.5 only improves the Podcast app experience, as Apple focused on Wallet changes for the iPhone this time:
Apple Podcasts includes a new setting to limit episodes stored on your iPhone and automatically delete older ones TV app adds the option to restart a live sports game already in progress and pause, rewind, or fast-forward.
Fixes an issue that may cause Braille devices to slow down or stop responding when navigating text in Mail. Make a fresh backup of your iPhone or iPad with your Mac or PC in case you want to downgrade your device at any point (you can’t restore from a backup made in iOS 15 if you downgrade to iOS 14) On your iPhone or iPad, head to Apple’s public beta website Tap the arrow in the top right corner, sign in if you’re not already Now make sure you’re on the iOS “Guide for Public Betas” Swipe down and under the Get Started section, tap enroll your iOS device Swipe down again and tap Download Profile Tap Allow to download the profile, hit Close Head to Settings on your device and tap Profile Downloaded near the top Tap Install in the top right corner, enter your passcode if needed Read the consent agreement, then tap Install two more times Your iPhone or iPad will prompt you to restart to complete the changes After it reboots, head back to Settings > General > Software update You should see iOS 15 public beta available, tap Download and Install
Multitasking, Widgets, Swift
The updates presented in iPadOS 15 improve multitasking and add new user-facing features focused on productivity and customization. While not every wish list item was checked off, the updates did address several pain points in the fledgling operating system.
This led to a lot of speculation around the tablet, including some users expecting a fully bootable macOS for iPad to launch at Apple’s conference. With iPadOS 15, users can enter multitasking more effortlessly than ever, develop SwiftUI apps directly on iPad, and share media via SharePlay on FaceTime.
When Apple first introduced iPadOS multitasking, it was hidden behind gestures and impossible-to-discover drag and drop systems. Previously, these features were limited to iOS, and widgets couldn’t be placed freely on the iPad Home Screen.
Developers can add custom keyboard actions to their apps and let users view them in this simple menu. Summon a Quick Note by swiping from the corner of the display using an Apple Pencil or your finger.
The window behavior and shortcut are limited to Apple’s Notes app, and third-party developers cannot take advantage of the system. Rather than set a blanket Do Not Disturb mode, users can now customize different “focuses” that control what apps can notify them, who can contact them, and what Home Screens are shown. The Focus settings Apple offers by default include Driving, Personal, Sleep, and Work. Users can set up custom Focuses, scheduled for specific days or hours, and per-app notification controls.
However, time-sensitive notifications like deliveries or emergency messages from contacts will break through a Focus when allowed by the user. Universal Control is technically a macOS Monterey feature, but it only works with iPads running iPadOS 15.
The controlling Mac can move its cursor over to the nearby iPad screen as if it were an extended desktop. The devices create a Wi-Fi Direct network, and the Mac chooses the side of the display the iPad is on based on user behavior. Each training module would offer game-like instruction on how to program applications and let users create sample projects. Swift Playgrounds acts as a good entry point for people new to developing apps.
Calls can now be placed in a static grid instead of having people float around and change size on the screen. Also, users can enable Portrait Mode during calls to blur the background image and focus on them. Finally, Apple added Spatial Audio to group calls, so voices emanate from the speaker’s direction on display. Use AirPlay to send the movie or music to your Apple TV or Mac and continue the FaceTime call on-device. This feature allows users to avoid keeping track of shared links or scrolling to find them later.
iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 review: foundational fixes
It’s the most incremental and iterative iOS release in years, a grab bag of new features that, while nice to have, don’t really move the needle or change your iPhone experience much. The flashy SharePlay feature has been delayed to later this fall, while Universal Control — presumably on deck for macOS Monterey’s release — hasn’t even popped up to try in beta yet.
With SharePlay not shipping with the initial iOS 15 release, this fall’s update is (at least for now) missing out on its biggest and flashiest feature. There is also the equally long-overdue grid view, which (combined with the new links) makes FaceTime much more of a viable group video chat solution than it was before.
Also added are some new audio features to help your phone better zero in on who’s speaking and a blurred background portrait mode. Even with the new additions here, I don’t think FaceTime is going to replace Zoom or Google Meet as a business solution (nor do I think that’s Apple’s goal here), but iOS 15 does make it much easier to use FaceTime for more casual calls with multiple participants — even if it’s mostly playing catchup here. When it comes to changes that will impact virtually every iPhone owner, Safari’s update is the most significant thing in iOS 15. It’s also the most controversial new piece of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, to the point where Apple has added the ability to opt out of most of the changes here.
(Incidentally, it seems that Apple agrees the design wasn’t optimal, as the legacy style “Separate Tab Bar” is the default here.) But it’s a lot more useful than that: Focus modes can intelligently trigger at times of day or at geographic locations, and toggle specific home screen layouts. Apple’s been beating the local machine-learning drum for years, and iOS 15 has two of its most significant moves in that direction yet: Live Text and offline Siri. It’s extremely technically impressive, but in the months I’ve been using iOS 15, I haven’t run into many practical applications for it in my day-to-day life.
The biggest feature though, is Private Relay, a VPN-style service that aims to mask your internet traffic from your iPhone. First is that you can’t use Private Relay to spoof your location (say, for sports or streaming content), since the service only allows you to anonymize your data within your country and time zone. And lastly, the service isn’t available in several countries, including China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines for regulatory reasons. Private Relay also isn’t quite ready to go, either: Apple is releasing the feature as a “public beta” to start in iOS 15.
At launch, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London are supposed to be available, but I’ve only seen the new look in the two California cities so far. The additions are nice: trees, bridges, and major buildings now appear in Apple’s stylized 3D view, and streets even show individual lanes when you zoom in.
There are also some flashy new animations: a thunderstorm will light up the app with lightning flashes, and rain will bounce off the top of the UI’s boxes and run down the sides of the screen. As someone whose Notes app in particular has become an endless pit of hastily jotted down text, it’s a useful addition (although it’ll be even better once macOS rolls out and I can access them on my computer).
Default app support hasn’t meaningfully advanced from the additions of email and web browsers last year, either. As I noted back in my beta hands-on over the summer, iPadOS 15 is virtually identical to iOS 15, except for a few iPad-specific improvements. Where last year’s iPad update added widgets, they could only be viewed in a specific area on the left of the home screen; now, though, iPad users get the same home-screen widgets that iOS has had for a year, along with the App Library feature (so you can hide apps without deleting them entirely). Given that iOS widgets still aren’t allowed to be fully interactive, it’s not the most useful addition, but you can get truly massive calendar previews and contact lists.
As a side effect of the expanded widget support, though, Apple bewilderingly reduced the number of icons you can have on an iPad home screen in iPadOS 15. I’m not entirely sure what Apple’s thinking here is — visual cohesion across devices, perhaps — but the net result is that a 12.9-inch iPad can display approximately the same amount of icons on a home screen as a 5.4-inch iPhone 12 mini. As I noted over the summer, Apple is largely sticking with its existing system, built primarily on split-screened applications and floating sidebars.
On the flip side, it’s another flavor of pop-over window in an OS that already has enough modal things going on without a great way to organize them. Ultimately, the new multitasking and split-screen views are a refinement of the older system, rather than some grand new paradigm for how to use an iPad. But those who were hoping that iPadOS 15 would offer a wildly overhauled windowing system — especially in the wake of Apple’s M1 upgrade in the latest iPad Pro — are going to be disappointed.
The most interesting feature coming to iPadOS, however, is Universal Control, which promises a new, seamless way to jump back and forth between a Mac and an iPad using a single mouse and keyboard. It’s the sort of thing that could offer users the best of both worlds of Apple’s computing vision, but we’ll have to wait to see how it actually works later this year; it’s not shipping yet, or even available to try in a beta.
Unless you really, really hate Apple’s new Safari design (which, following a series of beta changes, are less dramatic in the final version than when they were first revealed), it will likely be better.
iOS is now on its 15th major version, a number that doesn’t count significant point releases (which have been tending towards more substantial updates in their own right). Apple has spent a lot of time making it into a great mobile operating system, but after a decade and a half of improvements, updates, and tweaks, there’s less it needs to do.
The biggest new features in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15
Other FaceTime enhancements in iOS 15 include spatial audio that corresponds with their video feed’s placement on your screen, an optional voice isolation feature, a portrait-mode style effect with blurred backdrops, and an updated grid view for group calls that highlights the current speaker.
Be First to Comment